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Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2025 22:21:41 +0200
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To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Clarify discussion and voting period rules
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

The current policy regarding how RFC are discussed and voted on is quite 
dated and no longer matches the current accepted practices of the RFC 
process.

In the past there were several RFCs with a less-than-ideal course of 
discussion. Examples include RFCs being rushed through the process by 
less experienced contributors who are unaware that the two weeks of 
discussion is a *minimum* that can and often should be extended. In the 
weeks leading up to the feature freeze RFCs are rushed even by more 
experienced contributors trying to meet the deadline. This resulted in 
RFCs going to vote in an incomplete state, resulting in them being 
declined, wasting time of everyone involved when a little more 
discussion could've made the RFC succeed.

I've thus written up a policy RFC to clarify the current policy 
regarding the RFC process, to use less ambiguous language and to 
formalize some of the current of the currently followed undocumented 
practices. Examples of those would be the heads-up email of an upcoming 
vote and the announcement of any relevant change to the RFC text on the 
list, so that folks become aware of new points to be discussed without 
needing to check the version history all the time.

Please find the RFC at: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rfc_discussion_and_vote
And the PR at: https://github.com/php/policies/pull/23

As with all policy RFCs, the corresponding PR to the policies repository
will be the authoritative source of the proposal and the RFC (and
discussion) will only provide extra context. Please do not comment on
the PR (except for minor typographical or phrasing clarification
suggestions). For comments regarding the actual "policy" reply to this
discussion thread for proper visibility instead and I'll make sure to
incorporate them as appropriate.

I intend to dogfood the proposed policy during discussion and voting of 
this RFC. Changes to the PR will be considered changes to the RFC text.

To spell it out explicitly: This email marks the official start of the 
minimum discussion period of 2 weeks.

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus